


blood red and crabgrass green

by grimlights



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Gen, M/M, Nonbinary Kurapika (Hunter X Hunter), POV Second Person, i write second person because im used to writing homestuck fic sue me, kurapikas pov, kurta clan massacre discussion, kurta lore like knitting and also i talk about kurapikas mom, leorio at college, leorio lore that i am INVENTING for him such as a grandmother, leorio's grandma, mafia boss kurapika moments, so much discussion of violence, they go to leorios home
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:14:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,628
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27324082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grimlights/pseuds/grimlights
Summary: after another bloody night in their underbelly of the city, kurapika shows up at leorio's dorm room.
Relationships: Kurapika & Leorio Paladiknight, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Comments: 2
Kudos: 13





	1. wrong clothes

**Author's Note:**

> this is kind of prose-y and formatted and stylized in kind of a different way for me and i'd really love to hear your feedback on it!!! this is my first hxh fic but i am having leopika brainrot so bad so i simply had to sit down and write it out

You do not know where you are. It is late, past midnight certainly. The sleepy corner stores, having pulled their latest shifts, are shuttering the windows and locking the doors up. They serve no landmark for you, all looking the same. There must be a thousand convenience stores in this city. Portly old men sit behind a thousand identical counters chittering away with patrons, about politics and prices and packs of Parliaments. Those kinds of men don’t know quite what to think of you, as they sidle through the darkness back home. They rake their eyes over you suspiciously every time, never quite sure if what they think they’re seeing is right. Often it is. Blood, that is to say. Often it is blood on your hands as you walk crooked through the night-time. Nobody has said anything yet. They hold their tongues, satisfied to let you do whatever nasty business it is you have to attend to so long as they can get home to their DVRs. Somebody else will take care of it. On one hand, you are thankful for the grace of the lazy: you don’t have the patience to deal with law enforcement and you’d rather not have to. On the other, of course, it pangs in your stomach to be reminded again of the apathy inherent in people. So long as I am left to my devices, I do not mind who rots. This is the throughline of humanity, you think. It makes you dizzy. It makes you feel sick. And it is terrifying to you that you are the one with blood on your hands, the grim figure who benefits from the bystander effect. You do not deserve to be humanity’s judge by any means. All of it makes you sick. You just need to get somewhere quiet and dark to sit for a moment and collect yourself. But you are hopelessly lost. Every road looks the same at night, just endless spirals of navy blue, sparks of square-window starlight spread across the sky. Who knows how long you go in circles, it really could have been hours. Black shiny shoes hitting the ground uneven, a familiar film playing in your head: the sickest things you have ever seen. Blood and bone and gouged out eyes. Rust red on green, the long, soft grasses of your youth stained all wrong. Shiny bright tile of the homes of the wealthy. And their gold-plated teeth ruining its shine as they hit the ground face-first. You can imagine the maids the next day, fussing over the same nick in the tile for hours, a gun to their head. Chains jangle in your ears, playing across the images. Sometimes they sound almost like bells. Red and green like blood and grass, like pale green nurse’s scrubs with that bright cross sewn hastily onto the arm, like holiday wreaths: soft velvet bow on pine needles so sharp. It’s a lovely melody, it’s Silent Night. All this violence has to stand for something, has to twist into something kinder in your dreams. The chains become bells, the blood into blush, and the off-green of every hotel’s fake plants become the lush greenery of your home.  


And then you know where you are. There is the ambulance roaring into the lot across the street. That’s where the hospital is. Students do their clinical hours there, long hours on their feet, making all the words they’ve read in those heavy books count. They come home tired after these hard days of making them count, trudge heavy into the elevator. Head into their little cubby-rooms, sleep five hours and do it all again. This is where they live. This is where Leorio lives. You can hardly move. You are staring dazed at the windows up there, around where you estimate his being. As if you would be able to see anything at all. As if he would be there in its frame, looking down. Maybe he would give you a little wave, like he has been waiting there for you all night. Like he’s been waiting there for you every second since the last time you were here. You’ve been here before, months and months ago when the tightness in your chest let up for a brief spell. And you mean brief. You spent a day with him, under the guise that work had brought you to his city. It was a big city, plenty of business, a believable lie. You slept beside him in his bed, wearing his clothes. His heartbeat filled your ears and it made you remember Melody’s words. It made you think, how can you be so selfish? How can you soak all that kindness up for yourself when you are so undeserving? He breathed softly, quiet and graceful in sleep like he couldn’t in a million years be while awake. It made your heart break. Sharing the same pillow, your noses were almost touching and you knew no matter how much you told him no, he would want to follow you right into your life. Your sharp and unkind world. He would follow you down to the underbelly of humanity, he’d get blood on his only good shoes. Those pretty black shoes were a big investment years and years ago, now dulled and scuffed from use. He’d polish them each time he went out. He wanted to look like the kind of people who came from money. You wouldn’t want him to meet them. Their eyes are cold. They can afford to get their shoes bloody every night. They’re old drinking buddies, they are tall and carnivorous with the purest drugs and thinnest wives, they are wise and it has made them cruel. You do not want to be like them, you do not want to be one of them, you do not want to spend the agonizing hours you do rubbing elbows with them. It is simply a necessity of your goals. A means to an end. You could never be one of them anyway. Your suit doesn’t even fit right. You don’t look right wearing it. In your suit you look like you want to have teeth of gold, like the kind of person who doesn’t snort when they laugh. Like the kind of person you can’t share a pillow with, nose to nose, talking about childhood games. You are horrendously tired of being the person in the suit. You are tired of being coated in blood and walking dizzy down the streets and yet here you are. Unable to abandon the ghosts. You are chained to them, making yourself someone you’re not. Isn’t it terrible that only the ghosts get to stay who they are forever? They got to die in their bright cross-stitched tunics, sweet-seasoned home-cooked meal in their stomachs, their brothers howling beside them. 

You think you are going to die in the wrong clothes, all alone.

It had somehow slipped your mind throughout the night that you were here in his city, real work bringing you this time. It suddenly woke you up from your daze, the idea you may see him so soon activating a rarely used part of your heart. But you didn’t know how to do it, how to bring yourself to see him again. You had left in the night last time, a hastily written note on his nightstand, a lie about work pulling you back away. You are not good at lying. He believed you. He had left you many voicemails. You listened to them. And listened to them again. And again and again and again. You listened to them in taxicabs, in airport bathrooms, in the dusty dark of storage units hidden away out of sight. On trains and planes and automobiles, his voice the only familiar warmth in all those stark places. And yet you did not return his calls. You wonder if he thought you wanted nothing to do with him. You need him to think that. You don’t want him to. But if he is to be safe, he has to stay far away from your world. You would love him to be safe up in his little room, like a book safe and warm on its shelf, away from the malevolent buzz of this city’s undercurrent. You think about the twisted faces you’ve faced tonight. You are sure he has, at least once, treated their victims at his clinicals right over there. That is as close as you want him to them. Even that is so close it makes you want to wrap Leorio up and take him to a little island where the two of you can both never see blood again. There is nothing to be done. Blood is everywhere. There is only one way to make sure he doesn’t get hurt because of you, and that is to stay away from him.  


But here you are. So predictable you are.  


A child cries monster when all he really wants is someone there to sing him back to sleep. Someone like you lets themselves get bloodstained when all they really want is someone to come kiss their wounds. Before you can knock any sense into yourself, you’re in the back stairwell. You went through the backdoor. You remember that it’s always propped open. At any hour you can expect some student smoking a cigarette back there, top three buttons undone and running a nervous hand through their hair. Usually it’s Leorio. Tonight nobody is there but the wooden block is still wedged in the doorway. You walked right in, and now you’re going up the stairs two at a time. You imagine you’re a student. How great would that be? You have a test on Friday. Lots of reading to do. You always loved test-taking. You’re that kind of insufferable person who always aces everything without trying. You take your books to the library to a great big red armchair and pore over them for hours. You meet Leorio at the dining hall at lunchtime and after you eat, you sit knee-to-knee, quizzing one another on vocabulary. Maybe you have a laptop and a little messenger bag. Your hair is tied back out of your face. Maybe this version of you wears stylish jeans and ragged old hoodies of Leorio’s. Maybe it would be better if this person were here right now. Instead of them, you are at Leorio’s door. His is the last room on this side of the hall meaning you’re stationed right by a window overlooking the city. You can see your reflection in the mirror like a ghost. There is not that much blood on you after all. But you’re looking so tired, and so little in your too-long sleeves. Your hand doesn’t feel like your own when it reaches up to rap on the door, but you know it is because you can recognize your shiny rings. 

He answers too quickly, like he really was waiting.  


Kurapika? He breathes, deathly quiet like he’s not sure if he’s speaking to a figment of his imagination, or someone really there. He is wearing a stretched-out sweatshirt and little sleep shorts, eyes adjusting to the light and hair mussed from sleep. Standing there, defeated, in the hallway you try to give an explanation but the words die in your mouth and end up just a meek “um”. He’s looking you up and down, taking in every part of you with a sick nervousness in his eyes. He pokes his head out, looking down the hallway and then back to you and making eye contact, pulls you inside softly. He wants to know if you’re okay. You tell him yes. He awkwardly sort of laughs and asks if you’re sure. His laughing makes you want to laugh and so you laugh a little too and say yeah, just a little banged up. And it all unravels simply from there, the same way it always does. You’re sitting down on the edge of the bathtub in the teeny bathroom connected to his room, stripped down to your underclothes. He is gingerly washing all your little wounds with a wet cloth. And then you are clean, like a child been sung to, and all you want to do is sleep. You’re in his clothes again, sharing a pillow again, facing each other in the dark. He asks how long you’re in town. You don’t know, you say. Well, he is going home tomorrow. Home? He doesn’t talk much about home. You aren’t even sure where it is. He says yes. He says you should come and meet his grandmother. He says it’s on the water and it is unbelievably beautiful, sea air is good for you, you know and the smog in these big cities is just awful and I think if I know anybody who desperately needs a break from the city it would be you. His hand is resting very close to your face. He hastens a light touch to your cheek, just once. Could have been accidental. There is something pulling you towards him and there is another thing pulling you down. His emerald-green college sweatshirt hangs loosely around his neck and you can see his chest exposed. Feel his heart beating so fast so close to you. But from your stomach pulls that heavy old chain. There is so much work to do. It’s rust-red grating at your insides, anchoring you to these dirty cities. Please, he says. I really don’t want to have to say goodbye so soon again. You are not the person you ought to be. If you had gold teeth, you’d spit on him for being weak. You have so much to do. Every second that pillaged pieces of your family get passed around like pretty little conversation pieces is a second you have failed them again. There is no more room in your heart for anguish. It has completely bubbled over. You have grown so numb to it. The evil in the world seems like all is left in those red-carpet auction halls. But here in bed, in the waver of his voice, kind and hurting and wanting and gentle, there was good. Home was good. The people there were bright and kind and their heartbeats beat softly like that too. Perhaps it is a way of honoring the ghosts to stay kind like they’d taught you.  


You tell him okay. But when does he leave? There’s somewhere you’d like to stop in the morning. He tells you he’s got to catch a train at noon so you’ll have to wake up early if you need to cross town, what with the morning rush. You nod. He jokes you’d better not disappear, ok? This isn’t your ticket out is it, to “go grab your toothbrush” and skip town? You tease you guess you’ll just have to have bad breath then if he can’t trust you. He says of course I trust you. Too genuine. Suddenly pushed into solemn realness, pulled out of your joke, you tell him he can just come with you. That seems to set him at ease. He keeps you up for a while still, telling you everything about his home. There’s triple the stars in the sky that they’ve got here in the city. The mist off the water in the early morning makes everything look like a painting. No cars, no city rush to fill your ears on restless nights, just the chirp of crickets and cicadas. His voice is slowing down, filling with sleepiness and you’re drifting off too. His grandmother lives there all alone now. She took care of him his whole life. She is quite old and she finds the shopping hard to do. Leorio tries to go down there as much as he can and brings her groceries and a kiss on the forehead. It’s far, though. He can’t make it as much as he would like. But once he’s working, and he’s got his medical license, he’d like to have his clinic closer to home so he can take care of her. She is endlessly kind, and very proud of him, and he loves her with everything he’s got. You can imagine her, dignified in a little rocking chair with that resting smile on her face like his. You want her to think you are kind and good like them. You want her to think you are good for Leorio. You push away the thoughts of the danger you could be putting him in just by being here with him and think of the warmth of a mother’s love. You think of your mother knitting by the water and smiling to herself. She was endlessly kind and very proud of you. Would she be now? She’d want you to go to the water. She believed in the healing power of nature. Taking her flats and bangles off and wading out into the pond, calling out for you to join her, she said the mud between your toes would make you feel like you were part of the earth. You would laugh at her then. It makes your heart clench to remember. You want nothing more than to be there in the mud again with her. Maybe the sea air will feel like home to you. The dream slowly pulls you in and you doze off with Leorio’s voice the slowest you’ve ever heard it. I can’t wait for you to see it, he says.  


The morning comes in cold in the dorm building, and the sun outside is a cool white piercing through the window. All of last night feels distant like a dream. But the day is awaiting with no time to lose so you turn over to see if Leorio is awake yet. He is awake, poking at his phone’s screen. You ask why he didn’t wake you up. He smiles and says you looked like you were having a good dream and he didn’t want to interrupt it. Embarrassed, you give a short “oh.” He asks if he was right. Wouldn’t you like to know! You smile. Yes! he says. I would!  


The two of you push through morning crowds up to the hotel you had booked a room in the previous morning and were unable to locate that evening. It is a very fancy building, with grand gilded pillars holding up the front. Leorio is taken aback by its grandiosity. You feel embarrassed. It’s important to keep up appearances, you say, to the other participants of the black market, that is. The woman at the desk and the bellboy are overly polite to you and Leorio, trying to give you the appropriate title but unsure of what to say. Sirs and ma’ams float aimlessly through the air, never landing or getting any notice from you. You are just giving a blank smile all the way up to your room as Leorio looks left and right and left again at the golden sconces on the wall. When you go into your room, it is very empty and unassuming. Bed still made, nothing on the desk, everything right in its place. The only item of note: a little red suitcase leaned up against the far wall. You ask Leorio to excuse you and take the suitcase into the bathroom. You take off that dirty old suit, letting the tie crumple up at your feet. You pull out your old white blouse, sturdy in all the right places and light and loose in others. It was hand-sewn together, with dainty bead detailing across the neckline and a ribbon for wrapping the waist. You pull it back over your head, tie the ribbon, and it fits perfect as if it were part of your skin. You look younger in the mirror. You put on the matching white pants, and they hit at just the right place on your ankles. Wearing your own clothes again. You smile at the mirror. And then you pull out the hand-knitted tabard. You had made this yourself. There was a lot of quiet time in transit, in these quiet little hotel rooms, and knitting was an easy thing to pick back up. You had learned it as a child, it was part of Kurta schooling, as an essential skill. You had never been all that good at it. But you had to be now. You felt an obligation to carry on the tradition and it calmed your nerves when nothing else would, to lose yourself in the kind memory of being crouched in the schoolhouse with Pairo, knitting a very poorly constructed sweater as he laughed and laughed. It was similar to your mother’s old tabard, patterns and colors that would typically be reserved for adults. It was green with streaks of blue, yellow, and pink swirling through it. It was not the work of an expert. But it was good enough to wear out and about. Just not to work. Not down in those gritty, bloody places you typically frequent. The last thing you would want in those times is to look like you really are. You have to put on a facade to distance all those hours from the rest in your life. This is the first occasion you have had to actually wear it. You pull it over your head and your cheeks go pink when you look in the mirror. You look an awful lot like your mother. It’s hard to tell with your usually so-sunken eyes and the washed out white and black suits you put yourself in, but with a good night of sleep and your grass-green tabard you look older and kinder. This makes you feel safe. As if she is with you. Her warmth is shining out from you when you pull the bathroom door back open and see Leorio.  


He puts on a great big smile and says that you look really wonderful, and it’s been a really long time since he’s seen you look like this. What, wonderful? You laugh and mock offense. He laughs loud and nervously backpedals and says, no, no, just so happy! And really like yourself! You aren’t sure what to say to this, and you cast your gaze to your feet. I just thought it might be better to meet your grandmother like this, you say. He says, well, not that there’s anything wrong with how you dress now! You shake your head no. I don’t like it at all. It just feels wrong. That’s the whole point of it. It makes me not feel like myself. It’s the only way I can make myself do all that terrible stuff. You spit out these short sentence bursts, looking at the ground. Once it’s all out you quickly glance back up. He’s been eyeing you carefully as you tell him this and now he smiles a tiny smile and says, it’s good to have you back then. Good to be back, you whisper. The room feels huge around you. The two of you are standing so close in that small little space by the doorway, the rest of the space falling away. His hand falls to touch at the end of your tabard and he says, you knit this yourself? Yeah, you tell him. You’ve never been very good at it though. He says, no way! I would never have the patience for this. My hands are so clumsy. It’d be a terrible mess of knots if it were mine. I already thought you’d get along great with my grandma, but now I know it. She’s a knitter too. He’s been rambling this whole time, smiling nervously and rubbing his thumb along the yarn. You wonder if his grandma can help you with knitting. You’re finally at that point in your life when you’re ready to learn. You don’t think you know everything anymore. You’d really like to knit all of your own clothes, but you don’t quite have the skills to do so yet, so you’d love to get her wisdom. Your heart stirs more and more in your chest. You’d better hope she and I don’t hit it off more than you and I did! You giggle, pointing a faux-serious finger into his shoulder. He feigns hurt, pretending to cry into his hands. The two of you mess around aimlessly a little while longer before he straightens himself up, checking his watch, and asks if you are all ready to head to the train station. You affirm that you are and he offers you an arm and off the two of you merrily go. 

It feels like a different year altogether, all the city streets suddenly looking cheerful and bright, like all the clouds had moved out of the way. The old men at their bodega counters laugh jovially about politics, prices, and packs of Parliaments as you stroll by outside. You could spend all your days up here in the light, never knowing about the spider’s web curled beneath the city, the severed fingers rolling around in crates down there. With all the means in the world those golden-gilded money-grubbing monsters chose to live down there rather than up here in the sun. It makes you hate them even more. Love filled your heart, and hate filled your heart, you were alive with your heart beating hard in the midday sunlight. And you were reminded where all that rage came from in the first place. In defense. In memoriam of the great and the good, sunshine hearted people lost to the spiders crawling below the earth. There could have been no rage without that love. You knew if anything happened to Leorio it would just be too much for you to take. You hooked your arm tighter around Leorio’s as the two of you stomped across the city square. He did not notice it enough to hush or interrupt his excited chatter about the dinner his grandma was sure to surprise the two of you with. You really hope the sea air will help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is just the first chapter i am hoping to add more wherein they explore leorio's town together!


	2. kind old place

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> they take the train and finally arrive to leorio's hometown.

You are sharing a bench seat on the train with Leorio and his hand is absently grabbing at the frayed strings at the edge of your tabard. The yellow sun is poking through the window behind him and it is very, very beautiful. His voice is unclear to you, musical and soft and repeating itself. You are too wrapped up in the countryside outside, bright pink and blue flowers poking through the cracks between the tracks below. You haven’t seen those kinds of flowers in a long, long time. They’re real, wild and growing with abandon. He pauses his sentence in the middle, and you suddenly wish you had been listening closer. You pull your eyes from the flowers and focus them back on him. He is smiling a little. He asks you what you’re thinking about. You tell him nothing, what was he saying? He shakes his head and insists. No, really. What’s outside? You realize there is no reason to shake it away and not tell him, so you do. You tell him about those flowers, how they used to get braided into your hair for solstices, how they’d be dried and pressed to commemorate those days, folded into diaries. He listens with big-eyed reverence. He listens to your word associations, hopping between story to story, spilling the mundane secrets of the Kurta that are now lost to the world. Lost to all but you. You hand it all over, piece by piece and memory after memory and a great weight is lifted from you. To be no longer the only person holding all these things. You tell him about the weddings you’d gone to, the prayers you’d learned, twirling out in the native tongue you’d had no need to speak in years. The death rites. The lullabies. The nursery rhymes. He didn’t say a thing. He felt no need to joke through it, no need to relieve the tension that filled the air. He let your solemn silences lay out on the table in all their glory. He let you pick it back up when you were ready. And when you were ready, you told him about your mother and her knittings and her golden anklets and her bare feet in the mud. He told you about his grandmother’s galoshes sloshing through their backyard when it would flood. You told him about the little brown forest voles that would scurry across your wooden floors in the night and he told you about the biggest fish he’d ever caught. The secret hiding places of childhood, the spots you’d stash pieces of your soul to keep them safe. He promised to show you them all once you got to his town. 

The train stopped to refuel and he snuck past you, telling you he needed to use the restroom while the train was stopped. But when he came back, he had a fistful of those bright flowers in his hands. Your voice caught in your throat as he stood over you, tucking one behind your ear. I don’t know how to braid hair, he confesses, sitting back down. But I thought you might like to have some of them. You ask him what the occasion is. He tells you the occasion is that you are coming home with him, and that is a great big deal to him. In fact, he would like to press those flowers and keep them. You have a silly little smile you cannot get to go away. That is quite a serious proposal, Leorio! These flowers are for weddings and solstices. They are rare and very sacred. 

He says exactly. 

You swallow hard, and he swallows hard, and you’re looking at your hands. They look naked without their chains, they look young and innocent. They look like the kind of hands you can hold. Nothing to make them heavy. It is hard to imagine that these are the same hands that have had their knuckles split, the same clammy pale hands getting washed clean in hotel sinks after all those long, late nights. There is a bandage wrapped around your index finger, short chewed nails, and a smattering of dainty golden rings. You tell yourself again and again til you believe it is true: these are kind hands. These hands are not dangerous. These are kind hands. These hands are not dangerous. You look at his hands. His fingers are long and nimble, good for sutures and slipping easily into and out of rubber blue gloves. His fingernails are clean and sitting in an even row, well taken care of and blessed with gentle hands. They radiate heat, you can feel his warmth without even touching him. Your hands are cold. You want to give his hand a squeeze. You want to touch him in a way that says all the words you cannot find, how can you even say what the flower behind your ear means to you? You are not who you were a mere twenty-four hours before. You feel your soul taking root again. And it is all thanks to his kindness. How can you say that? 

These are kind hands. These hands are not dangerous. You reach for his hand and he slips his fingers between yours easily like its second nature to him. His are kind hands. They are not dangerous. They are warm and loving, sending a shock up your arm and into your chest. He is not taken aback. He makes no signal that this is strange to him, that he is surprised, that he would like to let go of your hand. No matter how much blood he has seen your hands soaked in, he cannot believe they are dangerous hands. He laces your fingers together quite tightly and neither of you say a word. There are hours left on the train and they pass without incident. The sun sets slowly across the sky and your hands stay together, slick and sticky with sweat but neither of you care to do a thing about it. You lay your head on his shoulder and listen to his breathing go in and out, every so often he will ask you again about your mother’s recipes, ask you to sing him the lullaby one more time. You ask him if he really thinks his grandmother will like you. He says he is sure. You ask if she knows about your line of work and he says no, it hasn’t come up. This comforts you beyond belief. You can leave that blurry mirror-image of Kurapika there in the city’s smog. You’d love to bury them away for good.   
As the sky darkens, pinprick stars crop up in the sky like eyes looking down. You hope your people are smiling down at you. You swallow down the knowledge you will soon have to go back to that too-wrong suit in those too-dark rooms, it is a promise you made to yourself but more importantly to those you love, and it cannot be broken. But for now, you run your hand along the yarn of your tabard and close your eyes. It feels like home with your eyes squeezed shut. Those bright, soft yarns and the warmth of touch. You lay your head on Leorio’s shoulder and you tell him a story about one summer solstice with Pairo. How the berry-pigment face paint streaked lines across your big smiling cheeks. How the sweet streaks of ceremonial ribbon flew across the sky, tied from the tops of every home. At midday, the elders gathered in the square and everybody had to recite the same verses as every year before. Then the adults rushed off to begin preparing supper and the children had run to the water. You had lain by the pond all day, sunburnt in every place but the patterns painted on your bodies. Then the call of voices echoed through the trees and everybody returned to eat. It wasn’t until later, when you’d had your baths, that you’d realized the paler swirls and stripes stained on your skin from where the paint had blocked the sun. You laughed and ran to show your mothers. They’d ruffled your hair and gave laughs into their hands like a mother does. Then they’d rubbed aloe onto your skin and tucked you into bed. On the rickety wooden stand beside your bed sat the flowers you’d pulled from your hair. You’d stared at them for a while before drifting to sleep. You dreamt the dream of a child, adventure and monsters and friendship and the world beyond. Nothing ever happened at home. You yearned to see more. 

You had no way of knowing that in years you would be dreaming of your little forest and little bed, sick to death of the world beyond. 

It was still early night when the train finally reached its destination. There was only one other pair of passengers sharing your car, but they put their books down for a brief second before realizing this was not their stop and going right back to them. Leorio shook you lightly and you shook the sleep off of yourself, finally letting go of his hand to wipe the sweat on your pant-leg and rub the weight from your eyes. We’re here, he says. His smile is wide, and you can tell he is giddy with both the exhaustion of the trip and the excitement at being home. You can smell the difference in the air already. 

You have to walk to his house, they really don’t use cars much around here. It’s okay, he says, because it really isn’t too far at all. It’s a small place. It is not too late but he says his grandmother will definitely be asleep. She’s an early to bed, early to rise kind of person. You can see the ocean in the far reaches of your vision, even in the dark. It is louder than you thought it would be. A lighthouse light spins dizzy in the furthest corner of your eye, and the moon is very bright. He was right about the stars. You can see them all. Looking straight up, you can’t see anything else at all. There are no tall buildings to cut into your eye-line, no windows up there interrupting the spread of stars. All the buildings here are short and stout, sagging with the weight of years. Even at home, the canopy of trees framed the sky if you laid straight on the ground and stared up. Here, you feel totally exposed. It is a one to one conversation with you and the sky. No middle-man, no buffer, nothing to protect you from all those eyes. I love you, you tell them. I promise this is for you. I just want to be good. I want to be happy. How can I keep your memory safe if I have gone bad like them? They sparkle the same as they did before and you imagine them understanding you. You think they would really like Leorio. Your family, certainly. And the stars might as well belong to Leorio. They spin for him, open up before him. It is like the clouds part as he walks through the streets. He stops for every stray cat he sees, affectionately purring out the names he has given them over the years. They all have names and he remembers every one. This is the place that made Leorio and it is clear to see in every part of it. The hand-painted lettering above each quaint little storefront is proud, straight and tall. The rows of barrels lined up outside are in perfect clean order like his fingernails. The big slice of moon in the sky is white and broad like his smile. The lighthouse light spins on looking, shining down protectively on the shore. The waves speak all night long with no response. They do not mind. They will keep on calling. They are kind. This is a kind old place.

His house is little with green paneling across it, and a white plastic screen door. It is raised up on blocks to prevent flooding, so you have to climb a tall wooden staircase to reach the door. He pulls a key from his pocket and lets the two of you in. It is funny that after all these years, it feels like the house of a child. It aches like childhood. Every shelf and surface is full to the brim with framed photographs, gap-tooth Leorio with his arms spread wide in the plush grass. Shirtless child in the huge ocean waves, too far to make out his face. And atop the creaky old upright piano, in the very corner of the living room, is a photo of Leorio as a very small child in the lap of a man who looks much like he does now. He starts unlacing his shoes and you follow lead by slipping out of your flats. The carpet is soft and thick beneath your sock feet. It is very dim in the house, not a light anywhere inside, the only thing illuminating it is the sliver of moon coming from the curtains. Leorio reaches for you in the dark laughing softly and guides you to the staircase. At the top of the stairs is a small landing with a door on either side. He takes you through the one on the left and then you are standing in Leorio’s childhood bedroom. He turns on a lamp there on the little desk by the door. It all seems so little.  
It is a very cluttered space, with stacks of magazines and books scattered about. In the corner is a little twin bed with blue and yellow star-patterned sheets. It makes you smile. He rubs at his head, embarrassed. This is it, he says, throwing a hand out at his little room. There is a still-dirty soccer ball on the ground against the wall, and a college supply list taped beside his calendar. You’re not sure what year the calendar is from, but it couldn’t be this year’s. It is flipped to May. There is Sharpie writing across many of the dates. You can see that Gon’s birthday is circled. I like it, you say. I really do. He looks at you with suspicious eyes like you might be mocking him. He’s sitting at the foot of his bed now and he looks huge compared to it. You bounce down onto the bed next to him, tell him you promise you’re being serious. It feels safe. He lets out a breath and collapses backwards until he is laying flat on top of the covers. You realize how tiny this bed really is. You say, you’re awfully big for this bed now. He laughs and covers his face. I know, he says. I don’t normally have guests, as you can imagine. So it’s a little better when it’s just me. You tell him you promise not to take up too much space. He pulls himself back up to be sitting next to you, gives you a stupid face and says if you want you can just have the whole bed and he can sleep on the floor. Rolling your eyes, you push him back down. He falls dramatically and crashes into the pillow at the end of the bed. After a few moments, he sighs and pushes himself upright and goes to his dresser. He offers you a pair of pajamas but you say you’re alright. He sleepily stumbles down the stairs to go change in the bathroom. You pull your tabard off, unlace the ribbon around your waist and untuck your blouse. These clothes are plenty comfortable enough to sleep in, and they are bringing you a level of comfort you are not ready to give up yet.   
You crawl back into his bed and get yourself underneath his star sheets. You feel like a voyeur, inserting yourself into this life that doesn’t belong to you. But the soft cotton sheets feel normal to you, wrapping you fully up in the illusion that this is your bed, this is your room, this is your world. When he comes back in his little shorts and green sweatshirt, he shuts off the lamp and hops back into bed beside you. There is no way around the beds size, you’ll have to fold up to fit him inside, and you naturally curl up into his side as he shimmies in. Hi, he says. Hi, you say. Nose to nose. He asks if he can tell you something and you say yes. He says he misses you every moment you are apart. You are so sorry. You are so, so sorry. You don’t want to ever have to be apart. 

But this is one of those awful, terrible things. You just want to be good with all of your heart and in this moment you feel that you are. There is just no way around it. Something terrible had been done to you all those years ago and every day you are caught up in its undertow, forced to be what your tragedy demands you be. You tell him he is so good. He is too good. He is the most good person you’ve ever known and he feels like home to you. He has his eyes closed and he is leaning his forehead up against yours. But I will have to go back, you say, voice caught in your throat. I cannot run from it forever. I have to finish the job I started. Let me help you, he says, eyes still closed. I’ll help you, he says. You don’t know what to say. You can’t say what you want to say, which is please. Please help me. You say nothing. He says, I am not weak, Kurapika. They won’t get me. They won’t hurt me. I promise I’m not going anywhere at all. I’m not going anywhere at all. He opens his eyes at the end, gentle and sincere. He finds your eyes staring back at him, scarlet. He tells you and you squeeze them shut, embarrassed. You cannot think of anything you could say that would be good enough so you lean forward and kiss him, just to the left of his mouth, and press your forehead back into his.

I promise, he says. Just let me help and I’ll help. 

His hands find their way to your face, wrapping your head to sink into your soft hair. He pulls you into his chest. Oh, I wish you could, you say. I wish I could let you. He says give it some time. He says you can stay here as long as you need. You sniffle and half-laugh and say, here as in your house or crying into your sweatshirt? He says whichever you want. He is too good. His hands are in your hair, and they are kind hands. He will hold you until you sleep, and in the morning he will show you his world in the light of day. You imagine it will soften you even further, to be totally dissolved in his life. There is nothing better you can think of. You lose yourself again in dreams of blood red and crabgrass green, sunshine yellow and seafoam blue. A kinder, softer world free of chains; like the doctor holding you tight is breaking your fever and you are seeing the world clear for the first time in years, free of the haze of illness. 

I’m not going anywhere at all, he says again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little shorter than the last time!!!!! let me know any critique and i hope u like it :)


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